STG Investigative Report : The Janus Pair
by LogicalPremise
Summary: An in-depth STG Analysis of Rasa, semi-OC character, and Brooks, remake of a canon character. Covers history, tactics, and abilities. Part of my Mass Effect AU. Some mature concepts.
1. Rasa

**A/N:** _Upset stomach. Did this to fill time._

* * *

 **– STG – STG – STG –**

STG Report on the Janus Pair, Rasa Diam and Maya Brooks

Senior Agent Vinaris to the STG Master

As requested, I've put together an initial briefing document covering everything we currently know regarding these… females.

I usually attempt to hold to some level of decorum in my reports (unlike certain agents assigned to the Broker), but as with the Odd Couple, this is a _very_ ugly pair of killers, and in many ways they are far more dangerous than the Odd Couple.

Kai Leng and Theo Pellham are brutal killers with two decades experience in killing and top-shelf military skills, but they are not subtle in any way but sneaking in to infiltrate and kill. Maya Brooks is so polymorphic she has run rings around not only the AIS, but even STG cells and entire Waves of Nightwind, and Rasa…

Well, Tetrimus once said he wouldn't want to fight her one-on-one, and she nearly _killed_ Inalia T'Rome and she isn't even a biotic.

As with all reports, by necessity, this document is not all-inclusive with details, but instead provides high-order information that can be queried in-depth at a later time. You will find, sadly, that most of this is conjectural. At best.

We do not even know for sure how old Rasa is, and I lost a Shieldbreaker and an entire deep covert cell putting together this much. This is not a typo.

This file is classified Virshan-Orange. This is the eight hundred and sixty-seventh Orange Section file since the origination of the first Special Task Order given by Dalatrass Shiron herself.

* * *

 **Caution: Read FIRST:**

As usual, most if not all information is based on four sources: existing historical accounts and records, eyewitness accounts, extranet information, and accumulated scans and examinations. Under no circumstances can this file be assumed complete, and, as always, assume that this file is a _baseline_ of her abilities, not a comprehensive coverage.

Given that both Rasa and Maya are masters at disinformation, counterintelligence, and subversive data hacking, all of the above is likely to be as useful as a cant-reader in a firefight. Assume that there is a possibility _all_ of the data is erroneous and strike with maximum firepower.

In a purely physical sense of threat, Maya Brooks is of no real moment, a good assassin and soldier to be sure, but nothing spectacular. Rasa Diam is a murderous titan who has cut down _multiple_ Transcendentals, forced a war priestess to flee, and is one of the only people in the galaxy that survived direct combat with Tyriun no Kage.

Per STG standing order 9918-sielta-five, STG units who can confirm targeting on Rasa Diam are to implement Protocol Forty-Four (self-targeted orbital strike on target) to ensure her death.

* * *

 **– STG – STG – STG –**

 **Rasa Diam**

 **Overview:**

 _Formal Titles_ : Commander, Cerberus Psychological Warfare Operations

 _Nicknames_ : Mariane Brooks (original name); Aliases include: the Shadow, Water-soul, and several dozen assumed identities.

 _Race_ : Human (heavily cybernetically and bio-augmented)

 _Age and sex_ : 51 (+/- 5 years), female

 _Wealth_ _:_ Highly indeterminate. As a Broker assassin and freelancer, Brooks was known to have wealth in the range of twenty to thirty million credits twenty years ago. STG and FINCIN trackdowns on exposed accounts since then have recovered at least thirty million credits and we have no idea how many more boltholes for cash she has. She has a collection of rare and ancient knives and other ritualistic weapons of murder worth at least six million credits, including a ritual dagger used to kill a Palavanus.

 _Psychological Summary_ _:_ Rasa is a very hard entry into the Plotting/Corrective quadrant of Villainous personalities, with occasional switches to the Cruel/Disdainful quadrant, baffling PsyProf for years. Extremely mentally unstable, parapathological fetishization of killing, depraved sexual appetites (even by _Vabo_ standards) including the mental corruption, torture, and murder of over sixty of her sexual partners over the years. Rasa is polymorphic in the extreme and _cannot_ be predicted.

 _Military Summary_ : Early training as assassin for hire and thrill-killer for gangs, professional assassin for a decade before Broker service. Another fifteen years of killing for the Broker, assume high-level training, and the past eighteen years with Cerberus. Master sniper and assassin. Master-class battle-suit pilot, fighter pilot, and gunner. Skilled with poisons, toxic chemicals, traps, explosives of all kinds, multi-part chemical agents. Extremely competent at CQC and unarmed combat.

 _Education_ _:_ Unknown. Based on her history, she had no formal education growing up. One Agent reported a story that she did not know how to read or write until she was almost twenty. It is almost certain she has a mastery on par with a doctoral degree in chemistry and biochemistry, however it was obtained.

 _Employment_ : Currently in command of Cerberus's psy-ops unit. Former Cerberus lead assassin, former Broker assassin, former freelance assassin.

 _Significant Family_ : Maya Brooks, adopted daughter/lover. Abandoned by parents at birth, no other known relatives.

 _Overall Threat Rating_ _:_ Ha, the scale doesn't go high enough. Black-Collapse-Nine and take that with the advisories that fighting her is about as survivable as falling into a black hole.

* * *

 **Historical Notes:**

Much of Rasa's earliest history is nothing more than guesses and bits of rumor. Almost all of this comes from Asset X09-BKR-39, a captured Broker data agent who turned coat to preserve his life and who was Rasa's handler with the Broker.

According to him, Rasa was originally named Mariane Brooks. (Search of SA hospital records found no such birth record. However, extensive bounty-service records for that name were found). She was abandoned and, given the horrific conditions in the lower levels of poor arcologies on Earth, probably brutalized.

At some point, she entered gang life, acting as a killer and drug runner up until the Relay 314 Incident disrupted human society. From that point, we have no information until several years after, when she was in the service of a human cyber-doc, drug dealer, and clonelegger known as 'Doctor Detroit.' This figure was a powerful crime lord (assassinated sixteen years ago) who controlled almost a full percent of the illegal revenue of the human race.

 _(Side note: Doctor Detroit was likely a fallen and disgraced member of the Eldfells.)_

Rasa became known to us after she began work for the Broker. How this came about is still unknown, but the results were bloody and vicious. Tetrimus was still being fitted out with some of his cybernetics and Tazzik had not even been created when Rasa was the Broker's leading assassin.

In the decade we had tracking on her, she completed a staggering fourteen hundred assassinations. This is not a typo. She was able to move in human and asari circles with near impunity and every attempt to stop her failed miserably – even the Lords of Sol's boogeyman, Tyriun no Kage (before his break with them), fled for his life.

What led to the break between the Broker and Rasa is not something Asset X09-BKR-39 knew about, but it was likely mutual betrayal. He did share the fact that Rasa had attracted attention due to her string of murdered sex partners and that the Broker found her 'troubling.'

The fallout of the break was spectacular, Rasa literally butchered well over thirty Broker heavy combat agents – two full teams – and multiple agencies moved in to capture or kill her. Rasa singlehandedly killed three entire STG cells, a Deathwatch team, a team of Nightwind, and two more Broker teams before the AIS and Cerberus joined the hunt.

She was brought to bay on Verthis 6 (after an explosive escape on Themis Station that left the entire Broker Network there in tatters) by multiple agencies, and then simply vanished. A year later she was wearing Cerberus colors and cutting a swathe through Broker cells she knew about.

We do not have further hard data on Rasa's past, and an alarmingly high number of people who would have known about it have been quietly murdered over the years. The bounty services company who had the most information was purged in the span of sixty days once she started working for the Broker, and it is very likely Doctor Detroit was also killed by her.

Rasa has already made one nearly successful attempt on the life of Asset X09-BKR-39, which raises disturbing questions about how she even knew he was our 'guest.'

* * *

 **Motivations:**

Death.

Rasa's mind is, by both salarian and human terms, broken fractionally. She does not possess anything even approximating a moral code, disdains life as meaningless, and is only spared an omnicidal rating by the fact that she finds most people not even worth the time to kill.

She doesn't care for money or power so much as she pursues the ability to be what Asset X09-BKR-39 described as 'formless.' She seeks to be able to kill and indulge her impulses without restraint and literally sees most forms of life as nothing more than targets.

A secondary motivation is the protection, grooming, and care (and ongoing abuse) of Maya Brooks, for reasons I would rather not speculate upon.

* * *

 **Organizations and Affiliations:**

Rasa has been a top-level assassin since she was twenty, and was the red right hand of the Broker alongside Tetrimus for a good decade. Since then, she's only served Cerberus. It is almost certain she has other connections, but connecting the dots to point to her is difficult at best.

* * *

 **Tactics:**

After Kai Leng, Rasa Diam is the most aggressive combatant the STG has surveyed. She is a specialist in murder and assassination, but – unlike most assassins – is more than competent in open pitched battles and the like.

Rasa's known armament consists of a pair of cut-down, heavily modded Skara-VII combat SMGs, an older pre-Relay 314 Incident weapon kept up-to-date by Broker and later Cerberus techs. In their current incarnation, they hurl three-millimeter, hi-explosive, armor-piercing darts at a rate of six hundred rounds a minute.

Rasa also uses a wide array of monomolecular knives, an eezo whip, monowire tanglefields, a total of eighty-four types of contact poisons, sixty-two types of toxins or chemical agents (nine of which are restricted, three of which are black nano) and – most disturbingly – has modified her blood to carry hostile nanoagents.

She does not wear heavy armor, but instead wears a very high-quality polymorphic scout-suit (stolen from the asari) and a photonic cloak, estimated duration of twenty-four seconds.

Rasa is a _master_ at thrown knives, and these are all coated in multiple neurotoxins and other substances that would serve to kill krogan, much less salarians.

Rasa is not as effective against highly cybernetically enhanced beings who can ignore the toxins and poisons she carries, but has also used (at various times) fouled-eezo discharges, EMP bombs, and elcor ion bombards to deal with such threats.

* * *

 _Specific Tactical Methods, Ground Combat:_

Long-range: Rasa is unique in that her entire combat style shifts in form and function dependent on range. Unlike most top-end combatants, who are clearly superior at one range or another, Rasa is a master combatant at any range and will never use the same tactics in a repeated fashion.

At long-range, Rasa will either use sniping and explosives to weaken and harry opponents, or use cover, concealment, and flashbangs to disorient opponents as she closes range. On occasion, however, she will utilize an omni-tool device to fabricate a drone that flings chemical agents, or lay omni-mines and move to flank and perform heavy infowar tactics.

Long-range combat isn't recommended as she has too many methods to disrupt a standard STG team.

Medium-range: At medium-range, Rasa typically engages with her SMGs – up to two hundred meters, she can hit with pinpoint accuracy, including both headshots or joint shots. Mixed in with this will be a torrent of grenades of a wide variety (she is known for looting our agents of grenades after killing them), along with quick-set traps and liberal use of drones.

On occasion, as noted, she shifts this up and instead will use explosives to reshape or collapse the battlefield, including fuel-air-eezo explosive packs linked to thin omni-gel tripwires. As you can imagine, this tends to disrupt unit defensive positions and she will use this to either open range (to snipe) or close range.

Short-range: At short to melee-ranges, Rasa will usually engage her cloak and move to perform a series of targeted strikes with melee weapons. Given that even a single cut from them can be fatal, she will combine this with a barrage of thrown knives.

If she is pressed for time, however, she will engage in the use of chemical agents (she has immunity to them all) and her eezo whip, using it to make an opening to either flee or move to a more advantageous spot. Rasa only engages in direct hand-to-hand combat if forced, but will not shy from such and is more than capable of killing armored batarians in melee with no noted strain.

Warning Advisory:

As many other STG files point out, BC9 threats aren't usually something you can defeat without either massive casualties, dropping a building on them, or (preferably) kinetic bombardment. Rasa is not the most physically powerful or dangerous of the BC9 entities by a long shot (read the Thana Vathan file), but she is more lethal than most of them.

Rasa will combine and use multiple tactics, shift her entire battle-style on the fly, withdraw and advance at random intervals, and generally make pinning her in place impossible. Combined with cloaking, stealth, and her physical upgrades, you are advised not to push to engage.

Again, she was able to take out a war priestess once with minimal equipment, scares krogan, and took out a Shieldbreaker in less than a minute. Fighting this murder-machine is likely to only result in lots of pointless casualties and more stolen grenades.

* * *

 **Physical Abilities:**

Based on recovered footage and autopsies of her victims, we can conclude Rasa is very heavily upgraded. Her strength is easily on par with very strong turians, her speed not much less than a salarian elite, and her toughness and damage mitigation is ridiculous.

Asset X09-BKR-39 was able to confirm that the Broker paid for top-level delta grade augmentations – sub-dermal armor, blood repair nanowork, bone lacing, bionetic muscle and nerve upgrades, etc. Cerberus has also undoubtedly done additional work on her.

She's fully capable of surviving _direct_ hits from a sniper rifle and even when badly wounded and exhausted, was more than strong enough to tear a security door from its hinges.

* * *

 **Mental and Psychological Notes:**

Rasa is, by her own admission, twisted and sick. According to multiple sources, her highest goal is to achieve some kind of nothingness in being, a polymorphic existence that simply mirrors and imitates its targets.

Rasa was not educated and thus no formal intellect rating is available. Given her accomplishments and skillsets, however, assume she is very smart and disciplined.

Rasa engages in destructive abusive sexuality with other human females, specifically those with darker skin tones and black hair. Until Maya Brooks, Rasa murdered these females once they bored her. Given human emotional relations with sexual partners, this is seen by most humans as horrific and was done in such a fashion it made the _Broker_ uneasy.

Psychologically, Rasa cannot be fully qualified by salarian terms because she is alien in the extreme, even to her own species. She is fully capable of modifying her entire demeanor and personality to fit into almost any social circle and Asset X09-BKR-39 said she was so good at imitating and mimicking targets that it was hard for him to figure out who the real Rasa was.

It is very possible she does not know who she is either.

* * *

 **Notable Allies:**

In theory, Cerberus – although Jack Harper's cool destruction of his former allies and his withdrawal from society means that if Rasa is too much of a liability she will be discarded. Aside from Maya Brooks (whose loyalty is absolute), she does not trust anyone.

* * *

 **Political and Social Notes:**

Rasa is a grand master at political and social intrigue, capable of holding complex conversations on the Atherion and performance art with alien socialites, seducing even wary targets, and creating large, chain reaction events through rumor and murder.

It is not known if Rasa has a political belief system of her own, but it is very likely such would be both simplistic and without moral overtones. She places no real value on life (or death) and sees most politics as simply another tool to use in getting into position, not of having any inherent value.

* * *

 **– STG – STG – STG –**

 **Warnings:**

The following advisories are considered _mandatory_ reading.

 **Just do not fight her:** The best method for bringing her down would be psychological warfare – AKA, kill Maya Brooks. Apart from that, any attempt to take her out is almost certain to fail unless it incorporates large-scale devastation and that is (currently) not on the table.

 **If engaged, initiate Protocol Seventeen (active sacrifice disengage):** The loss of an STG team at this juncture is counterproductive in regards to Rasa. Suicide elements should be sacrificed to drive her off or draw her away, and then immediate scatter exfiltration should commence.

 **Assume sighting her is a scrub-signal:** If Rasa is active at an STG Site of Interest or appears in an operation, it is very likely it has been compromised and is now either a trap or an ambush. Immediately scrub the mission, transmit failure code GH49349-V and fallback to established bugout locations.


	2. Maya

**A/N:** _Upset stomach. Did this to fill time._

* * *

 **– STG – STG – STG –**

STG Report on the Janus Pair, Rasa Diam and Maya Brooks

Senior Agent Vinaris to the STG Master

As requested, I've put together an initial briefing document covering everything we currently know regarding these… females.

To be fair, Maya Brooks is nowhere near as physically dangerous as her paramour. In some ways, however, that makes her more dangerous, both due to her skills at infiltration and because it has led more than one fool to underestimate her.

As with all reports, by necessity, this document is not all-inclusive with details, but instead provides high-order information that can be queried in-depth at a later time. Even more than with Rasa, Maya Brooks exists in an information deficit that we have been unable to resolve.

This file is classified Virshan-Orange. This is the eight hundred and sixty-eighth Orange Section file since the origination of the first Special Task Order given by Dalatrass Shiron herself.

* * *

 **Caution: Read FIRST:**

As usual, most if not all information on is based on four sources: existing historical accounts and records, eyewitness accounts, extranet information, and accumulated scans and examinations. Under no circumstances can this file be assumed complete, and as always assume that this file is a _baseline_ of his abilities, not a comprehensive coverage.

Given that both Rasa and Maya are masters at disinformation, counterintelligence, and subversive data hacking, all of the above is likely to be as useful as a cant-reader in a firefight. Assume that there is a possibility _all_ of the data is erroneous and strike with maximum firepower.

In a purely physical sense of threat, Maya Brooks is of no real moment, a good assassin and soldier to be sure but nothing spectacular. Rasa Diam is a murderous titan who has cut down _multiple_ Transcendentals, forced a war priestess to flee, and is one of the only people in the galaxy that survived direct combat with Tyriun no Kage.

Per STG standing order 9918-sielta-five, STG units who can confirm targeting on Maya Brooks are to implement Protocol Forty-Four (self-targeted orbital strike on target) to ensure her death.

* * *

 **– STG – STG – STG –**

 **Maya Brooks**

 **Overview:**

 _Formal Titles_ : Commander, Cerberus Infiltration Operations

 _Nicknames_ : Hundreds, possibly thousands, of assumed identities. Referred to by the human AIS as the 'Queen of Masks.'

 _Race_ : Human (lightly cybernetically and bio-augmented)

 _Age and sex_ : 20(?), female. No known offspring.

 _Wealth_ _:_ Unknown. We believe she simply lets Rasa manage her money for her, as with most of her decisions. Unlike Rasa, Maya likes to party and have 'fun,' even if her hobbies are just as murderous as her partner. Brooks has a taste for fast aircars and air-bikes, however, which is one of the few points of dissent from Rasa she has.

 _Psychological Summary_ : Brooks is a victim and, by salarian standards, completely broken. Unlike Rasa, Maya Brooks exists somewhere in the Depraved quadrant of Narcissistic personalities. She is almost entirely concerned with her own self-person as it relates to Rasa and revels in being abused.

She doesn't fit most of the personality types we typically see in this line of work. She doesn't disdain lives and morals; she simply doesn't see them as personally important. She has been brainwashed since she was a child and had, by all reports, already suffered horrific child abuse and sexual abuse _before_ she fell into Rasa's hands. The resulting mess is a person who isn't a person, but little more than a collection of imaginary people who strives constantly to please Rasa in any possible way.

Given her mentality, it is very like Brooks _cannot_ disobey Rasa in any way, shape, or form. When deployed solo she rarely if ever harms others directly, but when commanded by Rasa has engaged in the cruelest atrocities possible without hesitation.

As a result, Brooks is one of the most amoral and cruel operators we are aware of, though not through her own beliefs, but rather because there are no lines she won't cross at the command of Rasa.

 _Military Summary_ : While her early education is unknown, Brooks (through Cerberus actions prior to their break with the SA) was formally trained at the Vancouver War College and (in one of her alternative identities) held the rank of lieutenant. She has also been trained heavily by Rasa over the years, so expect her to be capable of much of what Rasa can do.

 _Education_ _:_ Her early life was a blank, but she has obtained remote correspondence degrees in psychology and human anatomy and studied for several years on and off with the University of Noveria. Several of her identities have certifications as trained psychologists in human medical circles.

 _Employment_ : Currently in command of Cerberus's intel unit and former Cerberus assassin.

 _Significant Family_ : Her family was most likely brutally murdered at some point. Her only family now is Maya Diam, who is a combination of mother and sexual master.

 _Overall Threat Rating_ _:_ Black-Collapse-Three.

* * *

 **Historical Notes:**

Almost nothing is known about Maya Brooks, not even if that is her real name (unlikely, given the similarity to Rasa's original name). Her place of birth was most likely a human wildcat colony, given the SA has no birth, arrest, or medical records on anyone matching her description until she was at least seventeen or eighteen years old.

From all indications, Rasa has been shaping Maya for at least a decade, possibly more. Her age is a guess based on appearances, but she could be older.

Brooks first appearance in our systems was her seduction and assassination of the CEO of Tierpoint Industries, a human who was working with STG forces to replicate the hyperscoop technology of the humans. The plans were stolen and both our operatives onsite engaged her, but were unable to stop her from escaping. From that point on, Brooks has run hundreds of deep-cover intel and seduction missions, often acting as a scout to pinpoint a weakness for Rasa to act on.

Brooks has always been associated with Cerberus and it's likely that many sudden breaches of security in human (or asari) firms have been the result of her actions. Aside from this, the skill she evinces in becoming someone else has made gathering any kind of coherent history impossible, as she only exists to serve Rasa and when not deployed apparently vanishes.

The little we know isn't pleasant. Medical records in a variety of locales imply Rasa has nearly killed Brooks due to her sexual antics over _fifty times_ and almost all of the cyberware Brooks has is due to injuries from Rasa, not combat. Her studies and interests always include focus on how to further sublimate herself and she has committed multiple murders against those who, in her mind, insulted or otherwise hurt Rasa.

* * *

 **Motivations:**

To serve Rasa.

This particular point cannot be stressed enough as it is a weak spot for them both. Brooks worships Rasa, and some vague reports imply that she flies into a murderous rage at anyone or anything who insults Rasa (or worse, wins Rasa's favor). Given that she was most likely abused violently in her youth, why she would worship a person who has done far worse to her is something of a mystery to PsyProf.

She has no real belief in Cerberus, or their goals. She has no pressing need to kill or hurt others, but does so to impress and please Rasa. She has no moral code and unlike most of our profile targets, is probably not even what humans would consider 'evil,' as she almost never engages in pointless violence and has no need to engage in criminality outside of what Rasa demands.

* * *

 **Organizations and Affiliations:**

Brooks works for Cerberus, but a better descriptor would be that she is Rasa's slave. It is certain that if Rasa left Cerberus, Brooks would follow without hesitation.

* * *

 **Tactics:**

Maya Brooks is a talented, but by no means special combatant. Her real threat is she is possibly the most skilled infiltrator (and seductress) the STG has come into contact with. It is entirely possible that _any_ female human an STG cell encounters could be Brooks, and much of her lethality stems from the fact that uncovering who she is prior to her first attack is almost impossible.

As such, Brooks usually will strike from complete surprise and at the most opportune moment. Her primary weapon is a heavy Talon pistol with an ammo shaver that utilizes blocks of toxic materials, usually tailored to a target. Secondary weapons include omni-blades on both arms, a bionetic module that gives her poisonous spit (with a range of ten meters), and a host of explosives, contact poisons, and smoke generators that are incorporated into thrown darts she carries.

She also has a sniper rifle, a heavy and customized Koris Direct-Action Marksman Rifle she 'obtained' from a quarian exile she seduced. This is a very ugly weapon that on a direct hit will kill almost any organic target, cripple most cyborgs, and can drop heavy mechs with ease. Shieldbreakers are not immune and the rifle will pierce side or rear armor facings.

Brooks is not anywhere near as lethal as Rasa in straight combat, but she is almost guaranteed to hit from surprise. Keep this in mind and be aware that mitigation strategies that rely on picking her up at range are useless.

Brooks utilizes _paired_ cloaking fields in sequence, how this setup is powered is still unknown, but she has a staggering fifty-two seconds of cloak duration, making her almost impossible to pin down and finish off.

* * *

 _Specific Tactical Methods, Ground Combat:_

Long-range: Unlike Rasa, Brooks' combat routines are fairly fixed. Long-range attacks are almost always sniper assaults from surprise, usually dug into a fortified spot. Brooks will liberally use traps and mines to ring her position before firing, with an omni-drone as spotter. Given the damage a Koris rifle can inflict on unarmored targets (an electro-plasma burst in your face is very unhealthy), most of the time her first attack is the last one. If engaged at range, she will use the weapon defensively, eschewing chip tactics to go for kills or crippling incoming targets before drawing back and letting enemies weaken themselves on her traps.

Medium-range: At medium-range, Brooks shifts to engage in evasive maneuvers and will not (generally) attack from surprise at this range. Expect a barrage of omni-drones, motion-sensing traps, and thrown grenades to disorient and confuse. Brooks will focus on either disengagement or closing range, as the majority of her weapons set is useless at medium-range.

Short-range: Most short-range attacks are done from complete surprise, and consist of a double stab at vital organs with omni-blades followed by an executioner headshot with her Talon pistol. At point-blank range, even a Shieldbreaker's armor will not fully stop this weapon, and most of her targets are not, sadly, Shieldbreakers. A normally armored combatant, much less one without armor, is almost instantly killed by this.

If engaged in short-range, Brooks uses her pistol and throwing darts, aiming to cripple, disorient, and confuse foes. Wherever possible, she will use smoke and recloak herself to reposition for another headshot or stab.

If forced into melee with no way to withdraw, she will, according to reports, fight like a berserker, engaging in extremely high-speed acrobatics and martial arts along with her omni-blades.

Warning Advisory:

Brooks is not as powerful as many other enemies and, given her light armor and armament, is technically within the capabilities of an STG team to take out using standard weapons. Given that her augmetics are not defensive in nature, she lacks the unnatural level of durability of most BC combatants.

Yet she is more dangerous than almost all of them in a way. Undying monsters like Tetrimus, Inialia T'Rome, or the Immutable can, and have, struck from stealth, but in most cases, you can expect their arrival. Openly hostile combatant-types such as Pinnace, Tazzik, or Tradius Ahern disdain stealth and are so well-known that they can be planned for.

You _will not_ see Brooks until it is far too late for forward planning, as your first indication she's on the field is likely to be the death of the cell leader. Brooks delights in setting up complicated, multi-stage boobytraps and killing fields and then driving panicked enemies into them with sniping and taunting attacks.

Engaging Brooks on her own playgrounds is insanity, even without the very ugly possibility that Rasa could show up.

* * *

 **Physical Abilities:**

There were several times Brooks has been bioscanned, and her augmetics are mostly limited. She has light bionetic muscle augmentation and the right arm is cybernetic, along with sections of her spinal column.

The rest of her modifications are a mix of medical nanites and other corrective therapies and bone replacement or bone weaves. These all appear to be due to injuries Brooks has sustained at the hands of Rasa, particularly the fact that seventy percent of her skin has been replaced. The bionetic muscle may be more of the same, as Brooks is literally covered in scars.

* * *

 **Mental and Psychological Notes:**

The colorful parlance of our contact who provided what limited information we know about Brooks is well-suited to describing her: 'batfuck insane.'

Brooks is the remains of a young female whose mind was probably completely broken before Rasa even showed up, who has fixated on pleasing and serving Rasa despite ongoing sexual, mental, physical, and psychological abuse. Fragmentary medical records from various infiltrations reveal that in some cases, Brooks was dealing with broken bones, second-degree burns, lacerations, and worse while on duty due to what Rasa did to her prior.

Given that she has wrapped her mind around Rasa to this point, any attempt at making coherence of her worldview is almost impossible. It's almost certain that if Rasa were killed, Brooks would commit suicide. She has no other people of importance to her and has become more and more fanatical, obsessed, and submissive to Rasa over time.

As a rule, I find human sexual particularity to be asinine and a large reason why the asari value humans so much. That being said, to understand Brooks you only need to know that she regularly engages in communications with the Vabo for – and this is not a typo – methods to defile herself further to the point that _even the Vabo think she is insane_.

* * *

 **Notable Allies:**

In theory, Cerberus.

Realistically, only Rasa counts, if you can call someone who does that to you an 'ally.'

* * *

 **Political and Social Notes:**

Brooks is an empty blank, that takes on the social and political surface shapes of whatever she is infiltrating. A master-class seductress who has experience with humans, asari, turians, drell, and even (no doubt deviant yindo) salarians, Brooks can act surprisingly upbeat, silly, and comedic, often putting people at ease who are naturally given to suspicion of others.

She has demonstrated a wide range of political knowledge, able to hold conversations on everything from the dynamics of drug pricing between volus and elcor to the nuances of picking autarchs in the turian government. In every incarnation, she appears fresh, young, polished, eager, and well-adjusted.

The fact that she is none of those things should drive home how well she can fool others. In her own personal life, Brooks has no political, moral, or social drives or even beliefs. She is the willing vessel of whatever Rasa tells her to believe and evinces no racism or other behaviors seen by most Cerberus operatives.

* * *

 **– STG – STG – STG –**

 **Warnings:**

The following advisories are considered mandatory reading.

 **Combat is contraindicated:** The likelihood of a standard STG team identifying and localizing Brooks before she can attack is 1 in 1,493,290. (This is not a typo.) You would literally have a better chance fighting off a Broker HCT than make Brooks before she's shot you at least twice.

In light of this, assume in any combat with her that the surrounding areas are either boobytrapped or lead to additional assailants. Brooks has been used as bait many times by Rasa to draw targets out of a defensive position.

 **Termination if possible is the highest priority:** Notwithstanding the above, but if a possibility exists to kill Brooks it should be taken regardless of cost. This would not only cripple Cerberus, but most likely make Rasa unstable or even drive her to suicide. (The fact that Rasa puts Brooks life in danger, in both the battlefield and the breeding chamber, is a counterpoint to this, but killing her is still worth it.)


	3. Rasa vs Tyriun no Kage

**A/N:** _The follow-on Rasa chapter. Brooks may get her own, wrote this out of boredom. It wasn't gone over by the Editing Gang, so any mistakes are my own._

* * *

 _" _It is 1430 local time, Agent Archais. We are in the initial approach lane for small craft at Indegon. Would you like to take manual pilot control?"__

She blinked lazily at the glowing status panel on the wall of her cabin and nodded. "Yes. Activate our beacon and load up the cover comms, package eleven."

She sat up from the hard cot she preferred sleeping on, bare feet touching lightly on the smooth metal decking. The walls were done in black fabric, the ceiling in concentric circles of noise-suppressible foam. Padding across the tiny bunkroom into the bathroom, she pulled out a towel from the omni-fab and turned on the shower unit, stepping inside after hanging the towel on the silvery hook next to it.

Warm water slithered over her body, hard muscles and matte-gray cybernetic implants alike. A hundred scars littered her form, some faded and thin, others still ugly and raised – welts of darker flesh. She ran her hands through long flame-red hair and then shook it free, before soaping herself down.

A few minutes later, she stepped out of the shower unit, toweling herself off while running over the contract in her mind. A hacker had discovered certain detailed information on a Broker front operating in the Systems Alliance, and had sold some of the data to P. The Shadow Broker's own tech-savants had discovered the intrusion and the vulnerability was sealed, but the hacker was still at large.

The Broker did not want this information to get out, and oddly enough, neither did the Lords of Sol. Prince Aloxius, the Minister of Information, had himself gone through roundabout methods to have the Broker take care of the hacker permanently.

A wet-team had tracked him to Verida III, but were themselves ambushed by hacked mechs and overridden security turrets. A heavy combat team had pinned the hacker on Ursaan in Elcor Space, but the man had escaped again, this time framing the Broker's soldiers as being behind the murder of an elcor life-minder with faked trideo.

The Broker did not like loose ends, and did not like losing money on contracts, and so, absolutely detested loose ends that cost him money. Thus, she had been dispatched to take care of the situation more permanently. Tracking the slippery little bastard had been more difficult than expected, but with her contacts and skills, she'd found him.

When she did, it felt too easy. Indegon Station was an unusual place for a hacker to attempt to hide himself, given it catered to the indolently rich, and the entire job felt off to her. The usual hiding places of the hacker had been areas where he could vanish or hide among others, but he could never hope to blend in with the mega-rich.

No matter. She would find him, kill him, and then move on to the next target. If she found a lovely looking girl here she could even enjoy herself and indulge a bit before pinning it on the hacker.

The thought amused her.

She walked over to the cabinet built into the wall of the bathroom and touched a panel in a series of taps, the wall splitting open from above and below as racks inside rotated into view. Six human faces – four female, two male – stared up from gel-bed crèches, eyes empty and expressions neutral.

With a gentle tug on her own features, her face broke away, her long mop of hair following, revealing a blank, black cybernetic skull. Her face was nothing more than a flat articulated front plate pierced by advanced cybernetic eyes and a mouth of steel brackets. She set her features down and picked up another face, using both hands to set it into and onto her head.

Pale golden hair fell sullenly to her shoulders as her cybernetics hooked in and the myomer muscles of the face twitched in activation. Full red lips curved mockingly as crystal blue eyes blinked and then narrowed. She paused, pulling a set of false teeth – this one slightly browned, as if she smoked – and snapped them into place as well. She clacked her teeth and then ran through a series of exaggerated facial expressions.

With a touch on the small omni-tool built into her arm, she shifted through several vocal patterns, before speaking in a gentle, almost innocent lilting voice. "I wonder what kind of story he'll have for me to learn?"

Nodding at her reflection, she left her bathroom, moving across the tiny hallway bisecting her small pinnace. The room she entered was constructed in flat armaplast with a black tone, the walls pierced by lockers and racks, the floor edged in footlockers and heavy armored trunks.

From a footlocker, she pulled out a skin-suit of reinforced ballistic cloth, shot through with reactive stiffening panels and body-hugging plates of salarian laser steel, all blackened. Over this she tugged on an omni-gel combat vest and her combat slick-suit, all smooth angles of black and dark red. Thin, formfitting boots of hard black leather covered her feet, and black gloves with small pouches around the mid-arm-length cuffs went over her hands.

A pair of low-hung web-belts were draped over her hips, one with a pair of holstered SMGs, the other bearing a series of small pouches, vials, and a larger pouch on her left. A series of monomolecular knives were tucked carefully into thin sheathes on the sides of her slick-suit, and a coil of wire – glowing blue – with a cube on one end placed carefully into the belt pouch.

She gathered her loose hair into a ponytail and tied it off with a simple cloth scrunchy before reaching for her combat mask, the eye-plates snapping into the hidden magnets below her skin around her eyes and the black cloth covering her features, exposing only her hair. Another locker opened, and she pulled down a long, narrow rifle with a heavy black barrel and faux-wooden grips, an oversize recon scope bulking above the main weapon. It collapsed into a smaller shape and then she hooked it to her back before stepping out of the armory and forward into the main cockpit.

Indegon Station blazed above the swirled angry clouds of Inthe, a gas giant in the Varker System. A huge and clearly non-military construction, it was the main locale for swirl-racing – mass effect suspended glider racing in the storms of the gas giant's atmosphere. Gambling, high stakes deals, illicit and illegal pleasures… Indegon was where jaded human nobles and debauched asari maidens came together, where the more malevolent turian outcasts did business with the most ruthless salarian gangsters and the volus took a cut of all the profits and trading.

It was a place where you were either 'In' or 'Out,' and if you were Out, you were going to be thrown off the station. Possibly right into the gas giant below. There were no poor people here, no middle class – only the rich, a few skilled tech-savants, a swarm of truly nasty security personnel who were also usually well-off, and an army of service mechs.

She sniffed and sat at the control panel, triggering the comms system. "Pinnace _VL-HH5 Krena_ contacting Indegon Docking Command. I am Lieutenant Misan Carpenter, Japanese Imperial Security Force, Solguard. My flight code is Zeta-Charlie-Omega-Five-Five-Kappa out of Port Misan. I am here to provide security to Lady Arisa no _Naruhito Shinnōhi_. I require docking, fueling, discharge, and I will be disembarking. I have a class VII weapons permit license, authorization JISF4445."

All of her certifications should check out, since they were all legitimate, even if the real Misan Carpenter was dead.

Several seconds passed before a tired and bored turian voice was heard. _"_ VL-HH5 _, this is Indegon. We are confirming your codes. Please move to course one nine nine mark five tac zero to line up with approach vector while we check."_

"Understood." She tapped the flight controls, moving the ship to her right and up until she was in line with the main docking port.

Another few minutes passed and then another voice came on, this one human, a cool male voice with a hint of a Japanese accent. _"Pinnace_ VL-HH5 _. Redirect course to two one five mark zero tac five. You are being directed to hangar 9A, sublevel six, deck five."_

She frowned. Her cover was to liaison with the small guard force for the youngest niece of the Japanese Emperor, and then to make contact with the tracking team, before moving in on the hacker. They were supposed to meet her at deck two, not five.

She shrugged. She had not been able to contact the team on the station due to comms security, perhaps things had changed. "Understood, maneuvering."

The voice answered. _"You are clear to dock. Customs has been waived; please proceed to your assignment."_

She leaned back into the seat, her fake features narrowed in concentration. That was not the normal procedure. While the Broker could always find ways around customs, she'd been fitted with the correct documents to bring her weapons aboard and had carefully made sure her pinnace was ready for a full inspection. Something was off.

A slow smile twisted her features, and with a small pair of clicks, she made sure the safety of her SMGs was off. "Thanks, Control. _VL-HH5_ out."

It took five minutes to reach the docking bay indicated by the control tower, outlined in flashing haptics with the doors open. The bay beyond was much larger than required for a pinnace, looking large enough to dock a light-cruiser, and – to her casual inspection, at least – was completely empty. The lights inside were on but not bright, and the far wall of the docking bay was illuminated only by the outline of the door in garish blue light.

She touched the ship down softly, three landing struts extending from the bottom to settle heavily into the crosshatched decking. With a tap of her fingers on her omni-tool she prepped her cloaking devices, then glanced at the status panel.

She waited for the hanger doors to shut fully and triple checking atmosphere and pressure before pushing the button to open the ship and lower the hatch stairway. Stepping down the narrow, metal stairs, she glanced around her as she finally reached the bottom.

She took four steps towards the far side of the hanger before the voice spoke. "You know, I was expecting something… more… from this encounter."

She internally triggered her cybernetic eyes, flashing from visual to infrared to UV and then to burst emission modes. Nothing showed. The hangar was empty, and there was no speaker system.

She tried for innocence first. "I am Lieutenant Carpenter of the Princess Guard. Are you my liaison?"

The voice came from her right now, chuckling softly. "You are Mariane Brooks, master assassin of the Shadow Broker. Don't be coy, it's really creepy."

The innocent look fell from her face, leaving an unusually blank expression and suddenly cold eyes. "If you're my target, this really isn't going to save you. You could just surrender now and make it quick. You haven't irritated me… yet."

The voice was above and behind her now, and she slowly turned, still seeing nothing. "Oh, I'm afraid poor Parker had an accident earlier. You know, mishaps happen all the time on space stations." The levity left the voice, even as it emerged from her right. "Problem is… well, the High Lords have really had enough of your boss's meddling."

She slipped her SMGs out from the holsters, eyes flickering in all directions. Empty racks, ready to receive cargo, loomed along the high walls. A series of He-3 tanks were embedded to the walls to her right, armored fuel lines neatly held in place with mag-clamps.

There was no cover to hide in.

"That's odd, given who's paying us for the hacker to die. And you are hardly the first person to try to kill me."

The voice whispered in her ear. "But I'll be the last."

She flung herself to the side, spraying a burst of rounds behind her. A fierce blue glow erupted from mid-air, even as her shots bounced ineffectually, small arcs of white electricity flickering in the air before fading to reveal a figure back lit by the lights of her own ship.

He wasn't a big man – thin, lanky, rangy-looking. He wore no armor or weapons, dressed in simple, black, soft cotton slacks, black martial arts slippers, and some kind of layered shirt. His face was blandly EuroJap, arched black eyebrows over aloof, amused eyes, a long thin blade of a nose, bloodless lips twisted into a small sneer, and slicked back hair.

His hands were covered with thin black gloves, and he spread them almost languidly. "I've waited a very long time for someone to be a challenge to me, and I hope you can keep up."

Her eyes narrowed and she slapped the controls of her slick-suit, before kicking back to open space. She faded from view as the visual camo engaged, her mind working furiously to plan how to get out of this.

She now faced the single most dangerous and lethal assassin the Lords of Sol had, a man who was one of the most feared biotics in space, the one and only biotic humans had ever created, rather than simply allowing to happen.

Tyriun no Kage, the Lord of Shadows.

She prepped a flash-bang and flung it in his direction, only to recoil as he flashed into blue light, emerging behind her and immediately erupting into blue radiance. Warpfire washed over her, even as she back-flipped and ejected a pair of poisoned darts at his face.

His hand flickered and the projectiles were stopped in mid-air before flying off in different directions. "Your weapons, I fear, cannot hurt me. You came expecting to kill a noncombatant hacker, not a biotic."

She skidded hard as a biotic lance of power clipped her, turning her fall into a rolling tumble and pulling a pair of glass vials from her boots as she got to her feet, flinging them at the floor. She triggered her internal breathing systems, even as pale yellow gases exploded out from the impact point of the vials.

Her eyes took in several locations and then she moved, even as more blasts of warpfire thundered in. The gas dissipated and no Kage shook his head. "Gas? I'm not stupid enough to get close to you, killer."

Her lips curved as she watched a counter in her HUD tick down, using every bit of her skill to avoid the lances of blue fire that continued to get closer and closer to hitting her. When it reached zero, she pulled out a vial from her boot as she threw herself into a roll and flung it in the direction of no Kage's position.

It shattered with a clink of gas, and then the air simply exploded.

Tyriun strengthened his barrier, then screamed as the blast wave shattered it and fire roared over him, igniting his clothes and burning his skin. He lost focus on his barrier as he hastily dropped and rolled, and in that brief span she sprayed his location with rounds from both SMGs.

He grunted as he was hit in the leg, even as he came to a stop, patting down his still smoldering sleeves. Pieces of his clothing had melted into his skin, and ugly burns were across his face. With a grimace of pain he got to his feet, blood seeping down his leg as he brought his barrier back up.

She smiled and shook her head. "You're really not very good at this, are you?"

He gave her a shallow smile. "Everyone gets one good hit. You had yours."

He clenched his fist and flung a pair of heavy blasts of blue power at her, chasing it with a wave of warpfire almost six meters high. It left him lightheaded for a moment, but that hardly mattered as there was no way she could dodge or survive.

The blasts hit and her image shattered, a simple holo-transmitter on the floor visible for a moment before his warpfire blasted it and the decking to bubbling ruin. His eyes widened as he realized what that meant before her voice lanced out from the side.

"You're not the only one who can turn invisible, but you need to pay more attention to positioning."

She erupted into view as her cloaking failed, a hard kick lashing out to smash into his face. He windmilled back, off-balance, as she spun and swept his legs from under him.

With a pulse of biotics he rolled to the side, dodging a blood-red omni-blade stab, countering with a plate of biotic force that caught her in the side. He flipped back to his feet as she recovered, and he flooded his body with more biotic energy, before biotically charging her.

He exploded into her, blue luminance flaring as they impacted, sending her flying. She landed on her hands and back-flipped, ducking under his kick, and blocking his knifehand. They moved faster than an unaided eye could see, his motions jagged and outlined in cerulean and cobalt, hers smooth and almost dancelike.

She caught his forward strike with a single hand, and his eyes widened. That was a forced biotic punch with enough force behind it to shatter a steel door, and she caught it like it was nothing. "Not too bad, let's see how fast you are, eh?"

The next thing Tyriun knew, he was flying through the air, only to smash hard into a cargo crate and fall to the ground. His chest felt as if several ribs were cracked, but he knew he couldn't catch his breath for long. With a snarl he splayed his fingers and called his biotics up, the air shimmering into a hazy barrier even as a pair of grenades detonated against it.

He exhaled, and lined his wall with warpfire before using a push on it. The entire biotic construct came apart in long jagged shards of compressed air, burning with blue energy, and he watched as she flipped and danced through them, kicking off of one to leap higher in the air and open fire on him with her SMGs. The tiny impacts hissed as they hit decking or his barrier, exploding into puffs of dark green smoke, and he hissed as he leapt back.

He pulsed a second push forward, blowing whatever that smoke was away, even while he hit her with a pull that drew her into it. As she lost her balance, he flung the strongest bolt of force he could at her, catching her in mid-air and sending her pinwheeling nine meters through the air to smash against the side of her own ship.

She merely dropped to the ground in a crouch, smiling softly. "Why is someone with your power working for the High Bastards of Sol, mm?"

He rolled away from her, and then knelt as he strengthened his barrier in her direction. He narrowed his eyes as he took in her words and then he shrugged. "They made me what I am. A hundred cloned children, biotic experiments, cybernetics, bionetics, drugs… I live and die at their sufferance. As do all humans."

The smile became a smirk. "Not all humans, no Kage. Pets, perhaps, but not hunters. It's a pity, you might actually have been a challenge in another setting. But the story of a pet isn't interesting. Time to die."

He looked at her in amused amazement. "I'm far out of range of your martial arts, and those SMGs can't hurt me. How are you going to do anything when I melt you and your ship around your head?"

"Like I said, you need to pay more attention to positioning. Farewell." Her voice was mocking, but she was firing even as she spoke.

He brought his barrier up, confused as she missed him entirely. "The hell are you—"

He heard impacts on metal and then a horrific screeching sound from behind him, and half turned. Only to realize he'd rolled directly in-front of the He-3 refueling tanks along the hangar wall, that she'd just shot with white-hot incendiary rounds.

He had enough time to throw up his defenses before the world erupted into fire.

 **– STG – STG – STG –**

"How's he doing?"

The two men in expensive tailored suits stared at a third man, who was tapping controls on a haptic screen and wearing medical scrubs. He straightened and turned to face them, framed by the backdrop of stars out the window-port of the cruiser's med-bay.

"Serious, but stable, although it was tricky when you first brought him in. For him to have used his biotics to survive that level of explosion… well, it was unexpected. He's suffered extensive third-degree burns to his chest, face, and right leg, and fourth-degree burns – that is, down and into the bone – to his right arm. He's also suffered lung damage, smoke inhalation, and several broken ribs."

The older of the two men talking to the doctor nodded curtly. "I see. Keep in him in isolation until the Commissars arrive – and keep us informed, doctor." He glanced at the other man and left, shaking his head.

The doctor turned to the second person. "He hasn't regained consciousness, yet. But he should be aware and awake in a few more hours if you had questions, milord."

Prince Aloxius Manswell shook his own head, his hand stroking his chin thoughtfully. "Tyriun has never failed to kill an enemy, except when that target fled headlong or the person he was fighting wasn't worth his time. Did you find any clues as to what did this?"

The doctor shook his head. "Whatever was used most likely burned up in the conflagration. The AIS forensic team is still investigating."

The Prince nodded, then frowned. "…Alert me if he awakes before the Commissariat arrives."

He stepped outside to see the other man standing outside the med-bay of the cruiser, finishing a conversation on his omni. He waited for him to finish before speaking, his voice clipped and cool.

"Director Callins, we're not exactly pleased our best point man is nearly dead of third and fourth-degree burns. This was supposed to be a simple neutralization against a tricky but conventional assassin. Now we have a station with massive decompression, several dozen burned, and lots of visibility and questions from some very rich, influential people."

Callins smiled thinly at the Prince. "Milord, the target was the Broker's own top assassin. If the rumors are correct, she's murdered everything from war priestesses in their sleep to top-end cyborgs, and the only person to ever send her packing was a goddamned turian Praetor. No Kage is good – very good – but he's also an arrogant fuck who thinks biotics solve everything." He gave a sigh. "I told you this wasn't going to be as simple as sending out your boogeyman and hoping he could crush her. If you'd sent additional forces…"

Aloxius folded his arms. "That option was taken off the table. What Parker found was too hot, too close to both NOVENSILES and to the slave deals with the Broker. I'm guessing he wanted his loose ends cleared too."

Callins nodded. "Most likely. For the moment, at least, the breach is sealed. As for the rest, we'll see how Tyriun pulls through and make choices on how to deploy him from there."

Aloxius scowled. "And this… Mariane Brooks woman? We just let her go, wait and see what the Broker's reaction is?"

Callins gave a tired shrug of his thin shoulders. "That is more your decision than mine, milord. You can continue to pursue her, of course. But if I may be so impertinent to make a suggestion…"

Aloxius narrowed his eyes. "Yes?"

The other man turned away. "Don't."

 **– STG – STG – STG –**

 _" _Agent Archais, incoming primary transmission."__

She looked at the features in the mirror – red hair, pale skin, thin lips, cold eyes – and smiled. "Route it to speaker."

A few seconds passed before a basso voice rumbled out of the air. _" _Parker is dead, I presume?"__

"The Alliance made him and killed him. Verified that already. They tried to take me out as well. They sent the Lord of Shadow. Not sure if I killed him or not, I had to get away after blowing up an He-3 fuel tank on him since I holed the station and couldn't exactly stick around to check. They shot up my pinnace pretty good before I got out of range, so I'm at Rhes IX getting repairs."

 _" _A clean-up team is en route, ETA: nineteen hours. Hold until they arrive, they will transfer your equipment, furniture, weapons, and fittings to a clean ship. Once that is finished, drop to zero contact posture for five weeks until we clear this incident. Once we're done, I'm sending you my most recent acquisition to… get him up to speed. A turian, Tetrimus Rakora."__

She arched her eyebrow. "I see. Interesting. We'll see what his story is and if it fits. Anything else?"

Another pause, then the voice continued. _"It would be unwise to engage in your usual proclivities towards entertainment, Archais. Zero contact posture means not getting more law enforcement on your trail – or a trail of dead bodies."_

She gave an arch glance to the dark-skinned, black-haired girl on the bed, mouth open in a rictus of pained agony, limbs littered with cuts as she slumped in death, and the smile grew. "Sure thing. I'll be Black Rim-side. Not many humans there, and I'll be busy reworking my suit."

 _" _Very well. Payment is transmitted. I will contact you when we're ready to move forward with Intercept. Broker out."__

She sighed to herself, then shook her head and pulled out the basket of cleaning supplies from under the shelf. It would be best if the clean-up team didn't see anything untoward after all. She'd dispose of the body and pick another one up from the bars before they got here, and keep it cool until she was on her way.

"I wonder if one can actually last five weeks…"


End file.
